Saturday, June 4, 2011

Dan Haren, who was scheduled to start game two of the series, has a mild back injury, which means that the Yankees will face Ervin Santana instead. After breaking in with the Halos in 2005 and turning in a clutch long relief effort against the Yankees in the playoffs (filling in for who but Bartolo Colon), Santana has put together some strong campaigns (2008, 2010) and some that would better be described as "clunkers" (2007, 2009). He's a power pitcher, but he's not throwing as hard as he was a few years ago. He's got four pitches, but his low-90s fastball and low-80s slider make up over 95% of his repertoire. Some 2011 charts and graphs are below (only 33 changeups and 18 sinkers this year, so no individual pitch metrics for them).

mph

#

vs RHB

vs LHB

Swing

Whiff

Zone

Ball

nsCall

GB%

Fastball

92.4

704

331

373

.469

.088

.474

.337

.366

.364

Slider

81.9

439

241

178

.412

.436

.451

.346

.411

.311

1194

574

620

.446

.209

.465

.347

.375

.355

The slider is effective at getting whiffs (anything over 40% is impressive), the fastball is not. He's a flyball guy, so he can be homer-prone.